Nightfall
by SventheCrusader
Summary: In matters of life and death, even the hearts of the heartless may be moved and awakened. When a figure from the long-forgotten lore of Las Noches reappears on the night Ichigo and company infiltrate Hueco Mundo, history as it is known - for human, Hollow, and Soul Reaper alike - is forever altered. Contains OCs.


**AUTHOR'S** **NOTE: **Greetings, Bleach fans. For a bit of background on this project, which ideally will go more smoothly than my previous attempts at publishing stories on this site and hopefully with far fewer dead stalls, this fanfic is a project many, many years in the making (actually nine, if we're being exact). I first conceptualized it all the way back in 2009, the year I first got into Bleach and also first became incredibly disappointed with the progression of the story after about the first half of the Hueco Mundo saga. As the years wore on and I only became more disillusioned with the canon story, I started taking this concept of mine more and more seriously, with only my lifelong procrastination stopping me from putting it to paper (so to speak) and unleashing it upon the world. In limbo it was created and in limbo it stayed until the last two weeks, where a combination of me (finally) tackling my procrastination and the release of the live action Bleach movie finally gave the the spark I needed to start work on the monstrosity that is Nightfall, perhaps my single dweebiest of creations.

As far as what you can expect as readers, my first note will be the obvious one: this story is going to diverge massively, and I do mean _enormously_, from canon Bleach. There will also be a heavy OC presence, but not in the capacity one might expect. I intend to dip into shipping, as well, but that's a work in progress and I'm sure I'll be just as surprised as all of you by the ships I end up choosing in the end.

With all of those things in mind, I unleash upon you fanfic hell. Enjoy.

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**BLEACH: NIGHTFALL**

_How I wish there was a heaven.  
All for one and one for all,  
A flawless Soul Society.  
\- Kamelot, "Soul Society"_

* * *

**ACT I: SUNSET**  
**Prologue: Primera.  
**"_Let man's petty nations tear themselves apart."  
_

* * *

Cold winds chilled and moonlight, cast eternal by a moveless, moodless white crescent, fell upon and illuminated the vast marble expanse of Las Noches. In the coda of Hueco Mundo, silence - great and unending and eerie to the living ear - reigned as monarch upon the ceaseless deserts, but there every so often came a time when the tyranny of quiet was shaken. This night - one of countless hundreds, thousands, millions in the endless history of the endless desert - saw that disturbance come, riding on the heels of shifting sands disturbed by skittering Hollow lizards...and heavy, steel-soled footfalls.

Somewhere along its flank, a trio of ghosts approached Las Noches, unseen and unheeded by the greater world, shapeless and featureless in ragged cloth cloaks that just touched the sands.

"Fascinating," one said as the three of them came to a stop, regarding a cracked, jagged hole in the great marble wall. One stood ahead of the other two, wordlessly regarding the breach ahead of them. "Either we've arrived in time to witness a staff dispute, or our old friend has a spot of company."

"Or both," the other spoke, a soft murmur. Then, addressing the leader of the three: "Complacency or dissent, just as you predicted. Do we seize our chance?"

Silence returned for a moment.

Then, once more, the third broke it with a soft sound that was almost a laugh. Almost, but not quite.

"Indeed," he said. A century he had waited, a century he had planned, and now - by the grace of some unknown force coming to call upon his old home, his old _fortaleza _\- he had been given his chance. "_Carpe diem,_ as the humans say. But this needn't be a slaughter, least upon our kin. Gather the others."

The second speaker inclined her head, all the ceremony and salute that was ever needed between them. "As you will, Primera."

"And as for yourself?" said the first.

Their leader smiled, unseen beneath his hood. Within, somewhere deep within the ancient walls, he could hear the sounds of battle. No doubt his fellows could as well. No doubt they also knew just as well as he that they stood before the walls of Tres Cifras_,_ the deep halls called home by the Privaron Espada, now broken open and marked by a perfect and perfectly literal representation of a crack in Sōsuke Aizen's armor.

_Carpe diem._

His feet took him forward. For the first time in a century, the man once called Primera set foot in the halls of the place he once called _patria._ Not merely home, but _homeland._

"I would stake first claim on what is ours."  
_**********_

Within the marble walls of Tres Cifras, Cirucci Sanderwicci found herself in a position that, just hours before, she would have considered unfathomable: locked in a battle for her life in the halls of her own home and at the mercy of her own fellow Arrancar. Even more preposterous was the reality that she - a former Espada, an Arrancar of caliber - would be forced to do so without the use of her zanpakutō.

_Goddamned Quincy._ An Exequias, one of Rudbornn Chelute's seemingly endlessly-numerous skull-faced foot soldiers, closed the distance with Cirucci and struck. Hearing herself growl under her breath, Cirucci swept to one side, brought up her hand, and snapped her fingers, letting her attacker take a lethal tumble into an awaiting _bala._ First regarding the remaining Exequias, then the battered state of her own body, Cirucci amended her mental note of the situation: _Goddamned Quincy and goddamned Exequias._

"You were warned," Rudbornn spoke, advancing on her. His voice, simultaneously distorted and amplified by his bull's skull mask, cut over the unspeaking ranks of the Exequias like a drone of doom. "You needn't have made this difficult for yourself, Cirucci Sanderwicci."

"To hell with your warning, _hormiga_," Cirucci spat, not allowing the pain her vehemence caused her to make her wince. Whatever terror she might have felt when Rudbornn and his drones had first come to collect her - and there was fear, loathe as she was to admit it - was gone, and now all she felt was fury and defiance. Come quietly? Her? A Privaron Espada? Fuck Rudbornn, fuck whoever sent him, and (now that she thought of it) fuck Aizen for allowing it to happen.

Cirucci had no great desire to die, but if that's what it had come to? She was an Arrancar, zanpakutō or no zanpakutō, and taking her enemies with her was exactly what she was made to do.

"I see," said Rudbornn. "Admirably courageous, but regrettably foolhardy. So be it."

Cirucci saw the crimson flash of Rudbornn's _cero_ and moved, instinctually falling back on her _sonido_ and discovering, to the briefest flash of her own relief, that she could still execute the maneuver. Red light seared the air where Cirucci had been only a quarter of a second before, tearing open the marble wall of Tres Cifras instead of its intended target, as Cirucci herself came to a stop directly behind Rudbornn, right hand already positioned behind his head and spirit energy forming around her extended middle and index fingers.

_Come to think of it, Chelute, to hell with you, too._

A distorted, warping note cut the air as Cirucci's own _cero_ sprang into life, setting the columns around her aflame with twilight-purple light. In that exact instant, Rudbornn wheeled where he stood, his left hand snatching Cirucci's right just in time to direct the beam exactly four centimeters away from his head. Cirucci had only a moment to register the sound of her _cero_ obliterating a small rank of columns above her, to intuit the sensation of bones snapping in her hand as Rudbornn twisted her wrist away from him, before the world exploded in a flash of crimson. What followed that was two seconds of ear-ringing silence, blindness dominated by white afterimages, and the sensation of flight - before pain exploded through her as she slammed back-first into one of her own damnable decorative columns.

Sight came back to her slowly, allowing her exactly enough of a visual of Rudbornn Chelute's approaching figure to know what was coming. Instinct drove Cirucci to get back on her feet, but the force of Rudbornn's _bala_ (at least, she _assumed_ it had been a _bala_ and not a _cero_, going on the fact that she hadn't been blown clean in half) coupled with her landing made attempting to move a titanic, and titanically painful, effort. She heard herself try to form a word, but what came out instead was a growl of effort that degenerated into choking, gasping coughs. Presumably thanks to some combination of Chelute's attack and the impact immediately thereafter, Cirucci could feel blood rising in her throat from some ruptured part of her or other. She thought, _Truly a marvel, the Arrancar body, to have all the same crushable organs as those of a godforsaken human._ This thought was followed, almost immediately, by, _End of the line._

As if taking that thought as a cue, the commander of the Exequias closed the gap between the two of them and snapped his unoccupied hand around Cirucci's neck, hoisting her up with the easy brute strength endemic, perhaps, to all executioners. She felt her feet leave the floor, sensed the tip of Chelute's zanpakutō pressed against her chest, and saw pulsing veins of red begin to creep into the corners of her vision.

"We could have done this painlessly." The voice beneath the skull mask, typically dispassionate, now carried with it a tone of annoyance obvious even to Cirucci's dying conscious. "Have you anything to say for yourself, 105?"

Cirucci mustered all the force left in her body, what little of it there was after her losing clash with that goddamned Quincy and this final encounter with the Exequias, and spat blood onto the impassive white mask of Rudbornn Chelute's face. As she executed this last act of defiance, she felt the fingertips of her right hand tingle for the briefest instant, then burst into ashes.

A smile crossed Cirucci's face, one she figured must look like an absolute horror show. If there was a perfect punctuation to her last statement, this was it.

"Looks like," she gasped, closing the fingers of her intact hand around Chelute's arm and pulling herself closer, close enough to look directly down the black eye-sockets of his mask, "you get to explain...why all you could bring back of me...was ashes." Her smile widened into a terrible grin. "Have fun, _puta._"

Rudbornn growled and let her go. Cirucci hit the ground, hard and unceremonious, but neither of them broke eye contact and nor did Cirucci drop her bloody horror of a smile, even as more and more of her slowly began to disintegrate. Quite the box for a sworn servant of the Espada to be trapped in. It wasn't quite the same as taking Chelute down with her, but it would do. With any luck, this failure would mean that his life wouldn't last too much longer than her own.

"Troublesome outcast," Rudbornn Chelute growled. "So be it. If this is the way it must be, then I'll at least have your head for myself."

He brought his arm up, his zanpakutō a lethal silhouette against the white walls and red columns, but...ha, it hardly mattered now, did it? Be it now or in another thirty seconds, the game was over and Cirucci had made her final play.

_Not a bad way to go._ She closed her eyes and let herself laugh. It hurt, but Cirucci's curent circumstance - a second away from death, brought low and ragged and with unlovely clarets of blood pouring from her mouth and nose - that hardly mattered either. Above, there was the singing note of Chelute's blade. _Worthy of an Espada._

"_Aguas de la Vida._"

The voice was so sudden, so unexpected, that it snapped Cirucci out of her dying reverie instantaneously. Her eyes snapped open - and were greeted by what looked to be, for all the world, the interior of a bubble. Her vision, which had been darkening in what she had thought - no, _known_ \- were her final moments, came back to her almost all at once, focusing and sharpening to a single point: the sight of Chelute's zanpakutō suspended, mid-swing, in the watery surface which had sprung up around her. Slowly-returning sensation in her disintegrating arm then drew Cirucci's eyes downward...downward, to the sight of that very same arm knitting itself back into existence before her eyes, despite her (admittedly, pathetically) dreadfully lacking healing factor logically precluding such a thing.

She didn't realize that she had stopped smiling and started gawking. She didn't realize that her eyes had gone full-moon wide. A thousand thoughts and questions, all at once, crossed Cirucci's mind as she watched her own body come into being again. The most singularly apt and simultaneously perfectly succinct was a single word.

_What._

An excellent question indeed.

Chelute drew back from the watery shield as though it were some foreign acid. He wheeled, his eyes scanning the room for the source of the intrusion. Cirucci herself broke her daze just long enough to raise her own eyes and follow the voice (was there something familiar about it? something buried, something long-gone) to its source just as Chelute also found it for himself.

And in perfect unison, Cirucci Sanderwicci and Rudbornn Chelute saw a ghost.

"Arrancar turning on Arrancar on the orders of a Soul Reaper," said the visitor, the clack of the steel-soled boots endemic to the uniforms of Las Noches announcing him as he stepped into Tres Cifras through the new entryway in the wall. The long, hooded cloak he wore, though ragged and tattered, all but defeated curiosity, but every word he spoke heightened the unplaceable familiarity bobbing just under the surface of Cirucci's conscious. "What intractable madness. Truly, a singularly _Aizen_ concept."

"What," Chelute managed, the first thing he had said in her presence to which Cirucci could actually relate. He gave his sword a mighty heave, freeing it from the liquid shield, and wheeled on the stranger. "What is the meaning of this? Identify yourself at once!"

Cirucci could hear the smile in the visitor's voice. Familiarity pinged, once more, as he spoke, "Under normal circumstances, I would do my fellow Arrancar the decency of a polite response. But these circumstances are far from normal, and any introductions between the two of us would serve little purpose. Besides-" He raised both hands in an open-palmed gesture that suggested either a shrug or placation. "I have sufficient sources to know your name already, brother. Now, Rudbornn Chelute, you are going to do three things if you have any wits about you at all: you will step away from your quarry, you will sheathe your weapon, and you will leave this place immediately. Mayhap you will have the opportunity to spread first word that your master's infestation runs deeper and more complex than he thinks."

Rudbornn straightened, blade in hand, and took a step closer. "Do you truly fancy yourself as having authority here?"

The stranger dropped one hand to his waist, flicking his cloak aside. Cirucci caught a the flash of black and gold indicative of the grip, guard, and scabbard of a blade. "First warning."

Cirucci heard Chelute issue a sound that could have been a scoff or a growl, muffled by his mask. "If you think-"

The stranger closed his hand around the grip of his zanpakutō and drew it only fractionally from its scabbard. The silver blade gleamed momentarily in the glow of the room's ensconced lights - and then Cirucci felt an almighty _wave_ of reiatsu blast across the marblework, almost oceanic in its force and completeness. For a second, the air was driven from Cirucci's brutalized lungs all over again, but it had nothing to do with the force of this visitor, this ghost's spiritual energy. The voice was familiar, but put together with that reiatsu-

The stranger spoke one thing more, low and conversational and absolutely deadly: "That was your second. Do not make me warn you a third time, brother."

For the briefest of moments, Cirucci suspected that the commander of the Exequias might actually take his chances with the new arrival (_Have a bloody lot of fun with that,_ she thought), but some combination of sense and survival instinct overcame his hesitation.

"This will not go unnoticed," he growled, stepping back. Without waiting for a reply, Rudbornn Chelute vanished in a blur of _sonido,_ his skull-faced drones following shortly thereafter. Cirucci heard the stranger (although how much of a stranger was he, really, when-) make a noise under his breath, head still lowered. It was almost a laugh, but not quite.

"Good," he said, speaking to the empty air. "Let us be known."

For the first time since he stepped through the cratered entryway in the wall of Tres Cifras, the stranger met Cirucci's gaze. Twilight-purple eyes locked onto one of deepest brown and one of coldest, most inscrutable icy blue, a striking mismatch framed by the draconic visage of his mask. Slowly, unsteadily, Cirucci mustered the strength to find her footing and rise to her feet, using the remains of the pillar behind her for support.

"You," she said. Her body decided it prudent to punctuate that single word with a cough as hoarse and ragged as her voice. She spat out the remaining blood aggravating her throat, wiped her mouth with a white-gloved hand (ruining it, but what did that matter at this point, after the various catastrophes endured by the rest of her outfit), and tried again: "You...took your sweet bloody time...coming back."

Humor flashed in the mismatched eyes. Almost reverently, as though processing the ceremony of it (and why not, after how many years it had been), Cirucci's counterpart brought both hands up to lower his hood. His white hair was longer than when she first had known him and his quartered dragon's skull mask more worn, but even after a century, the first Primera Espada - the First of the First - was impossible to mistake.

"_Buenas noches_ to you as well_,_ Cirucci Sanderwicci." Like a grandfather regarding his grandchild, wise and rock-steady, Albus Macchias smiled at her. "It has been too long, my Quinta."

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**A/N: **Reactions, reviews, and feedback appreciated.


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